


Dreamland

by quigonejinn



Category: Captain America, Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Choking, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 14:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>After coming out of the ice,  Steve Rogers has a recurring dream.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreamland

**Author's Note:**

> One character deliberately and consensually chokes another. Arguably, it's breathplay.

After coming out of the ice, Steve Rogers has a recurring dream: he is standing in a small room in the back of a very old church. It smells a little dusty, but it's all right. It's spring; the war is over; everything he can see out the glazed-glass window installed sixty years before is beautiful and green. Steve is in his his best suit, and he is nervous: it's his wedding day. Bucky is his best man, and Steve is waiting for Bucky to come back and tell him it's time to step out.

Steve waits. Nobody comes. 

...

Steve wakes from the dream. It's the middle of the night, and he pulls on athletic shorts and running shoes, and hits the indoor track at the gym. 

...

After coming out of the ice, after the Chitauri, Steve Rogers has a recurring dream: he is standing in a small room in the back of a very old church. It smells a little dusty, but it's all right. It's spring; the war is over; it's his wedding day. Any moment, Bucky is going to stick his head through the curtain that separates the room from the front of the chapel and tell him to come out. Peggy is on her way from the village; does Steve want to be the asshole groom who is late to his own wedding? Steve can hear the murmur of voices through the curtain. He can make out Colonel Phillips's voice; he can hear Dugan cracking a joke. He hears a high-pitched giggle, and Steve thinks that must be Stark's date. He can imagine the feathers, the dress, the jewelry. 

Steve waits. 

Nobody looks through the curtain. 

...

Steve wakes from the dream. It's the middle of the night, and he pulls on athletic shorts and running shoes. He finds out there are entire decks of the Helicarrier that are deserted at night and where his running won't disturb anyone and where he won't run into any other late night runners. 

...

After coming out of the ice, after the Chitauri, Steve Rogers has a recurring dream: he is standing in a small room in the back of a very old church. It smells a little dusty, but it's all right. It's spring; the war is over; it's his wedding day; Peggy is on her way from the village. There is noise on the other side of the curtain, and Bucky will come get him at any moment -- but Bucky doesn't. The noise from the other side of the curtain starts to faid, then stops entirely. Steve fidgets. Steve waits. 

Steve waits. 

Steve waits. 

...

Steve knows he has never been inside the church: he saw it once from the outside. The Commandos were being taken under cover of darkness from an RAF base to a ship on the coast for a mission in advance of the full Allied invasion of Normandy. The truck broke down halfway through, and the truck pulled over to see if they could make the fix. Steve hopped out of the truck to stretch his legs, and he went a hundred yards down the road to a countryside church. What could he do that two skilled mechanics, plus half the Commandos, couldn't do? 

There was an old yew tree in front, and it was half-dawn already. They ended up having to turn back and try the mission again another night, but Steve remembers that moment: standing in the church yard, dawn on the horizon, moss on the rough, stones, daffodils just beginning to push out from the snow and grass. 

Old graves of the peaceful dead. 

...

Steve finds out that when the Helicarrier is in the air, some of those lightly-used decks have their oxygen pumping reduced. They're still pressurized, but the pumps don't work as hard at night to keep them oxygenated to 100% of normal. Steve starts running in them. It's something to do. It's harder. He -- Steve doesn't run with headphones, and he likes, he finds, the feeling of having to struggle for breath. It keeps his mind occupied. It wears him out faster and better and more thoroughly. 

One night, out of the corner of his eye, he sees a flash of pale skin and red hair: the ding of the elevator doors opening. Steve isn't the only one who uses the light-oxygen decks late at night. Natasha is running away from her own dreams. 

...

He wants to see how much he can run because in the dream, if he doesn't wake up in time, Steve knows it ends with him pushing his way out past the curtain and finding that the chapel is deserted. The doors are open to the courtyard; there are leaves in the pews. No one has used the church for years. Steve has missed it all, and in the dream, he goes to his knees because he can't breathe. An asthma attack? Steve fights it. Not in this body, not in this church, not on his wedding day. 

In the dream, he never blacks out. He just struggles in the empty church until his anxiety wakes him or, theoretically, the alarm clock does: so far, it's always anxiety, and one night, Steve wakes in the middle of his dream-self having a dream-asthma attack. He is soaked in sweat. He is shaking. He feels nauseous. 

He pulls on athletic shorts and running shoes. He goes up to the light-oxygen deck and forces himself to start moving. He puts one foot in front of the other, so that he is walking; then he makes himself put one foot in front of the other more quickly and more quickly still, until he is jogging, and then he is running, and then he is sprinting full-tilt down the hallways. 

Even in his Super-Soldier body, it catches up with him. So does the dream. He loses his balance trying to corner faster than his running shoes will let him, and he smashes into the opposite wall. Steve pushes himself up on his hands, but his lungs won't cooperate: he is panting, struggling for air. It feels like an asthma attack, but it's nothing but loneliness and fear and temporary overexertion. Steve tells himself this. The world feels like it is collapsing in on him, but this is his current body. This is the Helicarrier. This is not the day that would have been his wedding day. He is never going to see Peggy from that dream. He is never going to see anyone else from that dream again. 

Distantly, as his body sorts itself out, as his panic attack eases, Steve realizes that Natasha is running, too. Natasha has been running. Natasha ran right by him in the grip of the panic attack, and thankfully, didn't stop. Steve listens to the sound of her running footsteps until the panic is gone entirely. 

...

Steve goes to meetings. Steve goes to briefings. Steve works with a SHIELD nutritionist to figure out what he should and shouldn't be eating in the canteen; Steve works with SHIELD's firearms and mixed-weapons trainers. Steve goes to more meetings. More briefings. 

Natasha is SHIELD's close-combat expert, and he is working with her. Two days, in fact, after Steve's panic attack, he has a session with her. Sessions with Natasha tend to involve tedious amounts of repeating the same basic motion until he has satisfied her that he won't fall on his face while doing it, but this time, she makes him run through a few routines, then nods. 

"You've been practicing. Let's spar," she says. "You've earned it."

They head over to the sparring mat, and Steve knows there is a reason for every tedious, muscle-aching drill that Natasha puts him through. He can see the difference, feel it, too. His footwork is cleaner; she tries a jab to that vulnerable spot that she has pointed out to him time and time and time again, but he gets his block up fast enough, and she skips backward, smiling just a little. It isn't a particularly realistic situation: she doesn't have her tac-suit that almost lets her climb vertical walls, let alone her Widow's Bite or Widow's Sting. Steve doesn't have his shield or the benefit of advance planning. It still feels good, though, to be moving and thinking and reacting. Natasha knocks Steve's feet out from under him. He rolls away, and when she comes towards him with her hands raised, he knocks her back against the ropes, follows through, and is on top of her. 

Instead of flipping out from him, though, Natasha looks at him. Steve looks down at Natasha. Neither of them says a word, but moving deliberately, moving carefully, Natasha takes his right arm at the elbow and the wrist and brings it down, slowly, slowly towards her. Steve can pull away or step back if he wants to. He looks at her face, feels her hands on him, and he doesn't. In fact, since it seems to be what she wants, he lets Natasha bring his forearm down to her throat. Steady. Careful. Deliberate. There are other people in this part of the gym, but the squeak of their shoes, the thud of them hitting targets on their sparring bags seems very far away because Natasha is gripping him mostly at the wrist now. 

Steve puts a little more pressure on her throat, enough to make it hard for her to breathe, but not damage her windpipe, and she doesn't let go of his wrist or push him off even though Steve knows he is, ever so slightly, off balance. She could tip him over. She could knock him on his ass. Her eyelashes flutter for a second, but she forces them back open, so they can look each other in the eyes. 

Her fingers stay steady on his wrist. The world narrows down to Natasha struggling with herself to keep from breathing, to the warmth of her skin underneath his forearm and the pressure of her fingers on his wrist. To Steve keeping just the right amount of pressure against her throat, to Steve remembering to breathe himself and not hold his breath along with her: it seems like a lot of things, but they don't feel that way to Steve. It feels simple. Somehow, it feels clean. Natasha makes a small noise in her throat, but her fingers don't move from his wrist, so Steve doesn't move his arm until finally, when her face begins to change color, Natasha lets go of his wrist. 

Steve lets go, too. He gets up. He steps back. Natasha coughs a few times, then pushes herself up onto her elbows, and they look at each other. Right now, there is a red mark on Steve's arm from holding it against throat. There'll be a mark on her throat tomorrow. Bruising probably. 

They head to locker rooms on opposite ends of the gym. 

...

That night, Steve sleeps like a baby. 

From the way she sits down across from him in the canteen in the morning, looks him briefly in the eye, and then starts eating, so did Natasha. 

**Author's Note:**

> Destronomics basically gave me the idea to write this, though she wanted Natasha to choke Steve and Steve to be OK with it? So.


End file.
